The Art of Fielding | Mockingbird

The Dishonest Simplicity of Perfection: Another from The Art of Fielding

by Ethan Richardson on Jul 31, 2012 • No Comments

We here find all-star, pro-bound shortstop Henry Skrimshander at rope’s end. With the promise of a record-breaking professional career slipping through his fingers, all big-dollar offers disappearing, the on-the-field errors just continue to mount for Henry, who can’t seem to get a grip on what’s happening to his omega-narrative of baseball glory. What does it mean when your efforts can’t stop the bleeding and, in fact, are making things worse?

The final straw comes on none other than Henry Skrimshander Day, by way of a crucial routine groundball that Henry fields, but then freezes. He cannot throw. He simply freezes, hands…

“Trying Not To Try” in The Art of Fielding

by Ethan Richardson on Jun 29, 2012 • No Comments

The night before all-star shortstop Henry Skrimshander’s big game, he cannot sleep, and finds himself walking out in his sweats to the dark-lit ball field. He is about to play before his childhood hero–the major league great Aparicio Rodriguez, who wrote the book upon which Skrimshander’s life philosophy is based, The Art of Fielding. Aparicio’s unparalleled skills on the field were instructed by a natural mythology of the baseball, of the fielder’s relationship to the baseball–and his love for the game created standards by which to live. Taking those laws into his heart, Skrimshander became the next best ball player…

Books / Law / Sports

Not a Masterpiece, a Machine: Performance Anxiety in The Art of Fielding

by Ethan Richardson on Jun 11, 2012 • 1 Comment

The Art of Fielding is the first novel by Chad Harbach. It’s been acclaimed by all sorts of tastemakers and auteurs, including Jonathan Franzen and David James Duncan (The River Why, Brothers K), and John Irving, and the late great Herman Melville, too, if he could. It’s a story spun with the needle of discontent, with the palettes of characters simultaneously endearing and destructive, with circumstances both understandable and painfully dire. Set in the not-so-fictional, idyllic-but-not Westish College community, there’s the college president whose efforts never landed him where he thought he’d be, the prodigal daughter who spent her potential…